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Short Round
Gastronomic Aspects of the German Siege of Paris, 1870-1871
Within two months of the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, on July 15, 1870, the two principal French armies had been defeated, one surrendering ignominiously at Sedan and the other bottled up under siege in Metz. By September 19th, Paris itself was under siege.
The siege of Paris was a hard affair, characterized by hunger, desperate attempts to break out, revolutionary violence, and a devastating German bombardment, until finally, on January 26, 1871, the city surrendered.
During the siege, food supplies held out for a while, largely because as the Germans closed in, a lot of grain and some 250,000 sheep and 40,000 oxen had been brought into the city and set to graze in the parks, and there were plenty of horses as well. But things began to get difficult as December approached, forcing people to improvise.
Recipes were devised for all sorts of animals, but cat seems to have been the most popular. Usually these recipes involved trying to disguise the flavor and quality – or lack of same – of the main ingredient, so we find a recipe for cat broiled in a seasoning of pistachios, olives, gherkins, and pimentos. In addition, all sorts of ersatz foodstuffs came on the market, such as “butter” made from the fat distilled out of cosmetics.
By the beginning of December, chickens were going for fr. 26; rabbits for fr. 13; turkeys, fr. 60; and geese, fr. 45. Cats could be had for fr. 5, dogs for fr. 2 a pound, and rats for one franc, unless they were exceptionally fat, when they would run another 50 centimes. By Christmas things were getting pricier. Cats were going for fr. 6 a pound and rabbits (often cats in disguise) for fr. 40, though rats could be had for 50 centimes a pound.
As the poorer citizens of the city had to get by on only about fr. 2½ a week, many began to starve.
Most of the animals in the zoo were slaughtered, and the meat auctioned off to the highest bidders. Two of the most famous victims were zoo’s beloved elephants, Castor and Pollux, who were shot, then butchered, and auctioned off in lots. Elephant meat soon turned up in puddings, as steaks, in stews and soups, and even as blood sausages. One restaurateur, having managed to secure five pounds of good steaks, sold them at a profit of fr. 600. Not wishing to lose so lucrative a trade, he proceeded to dress up select cuts of horse meat as elephant and continued raking in the francs for some weeks more.
For Christmas, the Restaurant Voison, one of the city’s finest eateries, featured a special holiday menu that included.
Stuffed Ass’s Head
Consommé of Elephant
Roast Camel a la anglais
Kangaroo Stew
Joint of Bear, with pepper sauce
Wolf Haunch, with chevreuil sauce
Roast Cat flanked with Rats
Terrine of Antelope with Truffles
These were organized into six courses, complete with various veggies and other sides. And since there was no shortage of wine in the city, these exotic – and certainly never repeated – dishes were washed down with (presumably copious amounts of) Latour Blanche, 1861, Mouton-Rothschild 1846, Romanee-Conti 1858, Chateau Palmer 1864, after which everyone enjoyed dessert, sherry, an 1827 port, coffee, and selected liqueurs.
After the war, a plaque was mounted in the Paris zoo that read, “During the siege of Paris, the animals from the zoo served as food for the Parisians.”
Footnote: The famous Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935), who more than anyone codified French cuisine, has sometimes been reported as having served as a chef during the siege, but this is incorrect. A reservist, he was called up for active duty on the outbreak of the war, and was assigned to cook for the staff of the Army the Rhine, which ended up being besieged in Metz, until it surrendered in October of 1870.
The Bonaparte Who Might Have Ruled England
By the end of the Napoleonic Wars, King George III of England was sunk deep in madness, and the royal authority was being exercised by his son the Prince of Wales (or as Beau Brummel was wont to call him, “The Prince of Whales”). The Prince-Regent himself had only one child, Princess Charlotte, a bright young women who, in contrast to her father was widely admired. Alas, Princes Charlotte died in childbirth 1817, thus altering the line of succession. When George III died, he was, naturally succeeded by the Prince-Regent, who duly became George IV in 1820. Since the Prince-Regent lacked a legal heir of his body (there were a number of illegitimate offspring, one of whom had an interesting impact on history, being the ancestor of the American Ord family, but that’s another story), the succession would pass to a sibling. Now the Prince-Regent had a flock of brothers and sisters, but in 1817 none of them had any legitimate children of their own either. Next in line after George IV’s siblings, were two German cousins, who also lacked heirs. The next in line after them was thus Princess Friederike Catherine Sophie Dorothea von Württemberg, the grand-daughter of Augusta of Hanover, the Princess Royal of England, elder sister to George III. If this came to pass even the staunchest Tories might have abandoned their devotion to legitimacy, for Princess Catherina, as she was commonly, known, was married to one Jerome Bonaparte, sometime King of Westphalia, and she, or her heirs, would only have had to join the Church of England to be able to claim the throne.
England was spared the indignity of a Bonaparte on the throne because, in 1818, George IV’s bachelor brother Prince Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent, aged 50, married the 31-year old Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, who, the following year produced a daughter, Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent, who although only fifth in line to the throne, inherited it when her Uncle William IV died in 1837, as Queen Victoria, to reign until 1901.
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